Twitter Update: Shahrukh is Cute

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You know how I know Shahrukh loves me? Just as I am looking at my numbers thinking “wow, my views are down today!”, he posts a thing on twitter just for me, to pull them up again. Thank you Shahrukh! Love you too!

27 years ago, Shahrukh’s first movie released. Now, those of us who have advanced degrees in Shahrukhography are aware that technically the first movie he signed and filmed was Dil Aashna Hai, but the first movie to release was Deewana. In which he plays the second hero, not even appearing until after the interval, introduced riding a motorcycle and singing a song to represent the modern urban youth he is playing (compared to the older princely estate hero of the first half).

Today, he posted a video with the song playing in the background to thank everyone for 27 years, also riding a motorcycle:

This is a very nice charming smart thing to do, all the reasons we love him. And now I am going to break down the larger meaning (WITHOUT MEANING ANY INSULT OR LACK OF LOVE) because that is how my mind works.

Shahrukh has been doing these little videos more and more, it’s a nice way to do a fan interaction without risking the obsessive analysis that his interviews and even tweets receive. Plus, there is no expectation of interaction if he is just doing a video. And he can provide the intonations and so on that make the meaning of words so much more clear than when they are written.

The content of the video itself gives us three messages. First, a call back to the length of his career and how long he has been around. Second, that he loves his fans and appreciates them. Third, a shout out to a motorcycle brand he represents.

That’s kind of where he is at right now in public life. He’s resting on his laurals, not bothering to make another movie for people to tear apart for a while. But he still has a large faithful following. And the money is rolling in thanks to brand endorsements.

For a 27th anniversary in the film industry message, it’s kind of weirdly pulling on things outside of film! No talk about being an actor, his next movie, anything like that. He is Shahrukh-Without Movies.

Oh, and it’s also in English, which is because he loves me, Margaret, and wanted to make sure I could understand everything he said. Or more generally, is reaching to an international audience more than Indian.

And now I will fan gush:

So cute!!!! Playing with the instagram filter like the big nerd we know he is, still with his motorcycles at age 52, and that hair cut makes him look as young as he was when he started out. I love it when his bangs go shaggy! And the little reminder to wear a helmet? Kills me with the Dad-hotness!

38 thoughts on “Twitter Update: Shahrukh is Cute”

  1. He does love you, but I have to be honest not quite as much as he loves me…..that being said (as he always says) I LOVE that you jumped on this right away. It is an adorable tweet and I think you are spot on about him not mentioning films and AGAIN mentions failures. He really is still hurting. I’ve tried to compare his career to Amitabh’s…what was he doing at the same age etc. He took a break around this age and then came back more clearly as the older man and has done and is doing some really good roles…maybe that’s Shah Rukh’s plan…..that and producing…

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    • Amitabh also tried to get into producing and the general corporate world at this age, and failed. But I bet it was the same urge, this feeling of having reached a higher level in the industry than mere “Acting” could accurately describe, it was time to put all he knew to use in an effort to serve the industry in a different way.

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      • This time somehow it knew you! Oh, and thank you for your kind words on twitter just now.

        On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 2:54 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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    • Yeah, you missed the era when his twitter was awesome. He used to tweet so much and so casually that it was miss-spelled and all kinds of crazy stream of consciousness weird stuff. Now the only time he is on it, it’s these really careful videos with exact messages.

      Also, assuming this was professionally done and not just a kid holding a cell phone, do you think he has a full time camera person just hanging out at his house? Or did he call someone up and say “hey, I need to do a video for the 27th anniversary, come over here real quick and shoot it for me”? Because it still feels last minute to me, that’s just the driveway of his house, and he is kind of missing the twitter wave (as though he saw all the tweets and thought “hey, I should do something” instead of pre-scheduling it). Although, he also has a full VFX studio at his command, he could just have done a random cell phone video and then sent the file over and said “hey, stop working on the major contract for that action movie, fix this video up for me real quick instead so I can put it on twitter”.

      On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 11:36 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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        • In that case, why isn’t he giving us more videos??? He’s got a whole VFX studio! He could make it a daily task, everyone has to spend the first five minutes of their day editing an SRK twitter video, like having a cup of coffee. Maybe a challenge, everyone does the same video but different and he picks the best one. Great worker moral boost, Shahrukh should get right on that.

          On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 11:54 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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          • I don’t think SRK likes social media anymore. It’s too abusive and angry a platform. It was different years ago when twitter was still kind of obscure in India. Only the young and savvy were using it and you could post whatever random things you wanted and it wouldn’t be an issue. Then suddenly costs went down a lot especially with Jio and suddenly millions of new people were dumped onto these platforms. These masses went wild and everything became about religion and hatred and abuse. People who aren’t so good at English also exploded leading to huge misinterpretations of words too. The time to freely post whatever is gone. Now celebrities have to be very careful so everything becomes boring and sanitized.

            I remember he completely left for a while because he was upset and then came back eventually and said he would only post occasional work-related things now.

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          • I don’t think that is how endorsements work in India. More it is a brand relationship then a bit by bit payment. He got the two free motorcycles from a brand he has a relationship with, he mentions them in the video and makes sure the logo shows, the brand is grateful and renews his contract, other brands say “dang, if we sign with Shahrukh he will include our product in random videos!” and go after him. If he hadn’t done this video, I imagine it would have just been a tweet saying “thank you BMW for the lovely motorcycles, I so enjoy our relationship and your great products” or something like that. He does a lot of kind of extra stuff like that for his brands, wears Tag Huer watches in his movies and so on.

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          • Im not surprised why SRK doesn’t use Social media too much. There are a lot of people including the English speaking young population of India (Which is a lot of people), who seem to think its in Vogue to be Extreme right wing and anti muslim, anti-establishment, nationalist etc. And SRK representing an Indian minority and giving off Liberal /left wing vibes is gonna attract a lot of these trolls. Mean while actresses like Kangana Ranaut are held in high regard by these trolls.

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          • Yeah, you’re right. Brands works very differently in India. A lot of these kinds of gifts are given based on old relationships. They are not even brand partnerships sometimes. I remember SRK had once been spotted driving a Bugatti Veyron, a very expensive fancy car (costs between 2-3 million USD) and the media started writing that he had bought the car. Later on in some interview, he was asked and he said his friend left the car at Mannat and wanted him to try it out and he kept telling him to take it back because he is not interested in cars. But that he insists on him having it and has been sitting in his driveway for 6 months and he doesn’t even drive it.

            I think these are old relationships where the people actually become friends over time. Giving them free things means they might use it and be seen by the media and it’s free advertising. There are no contracts or payment plans or anything formal about it.

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      • I’ve downloaded all his tweets, through Feb or so this year. Just because they are such a fun window into his moods and mind, and because of the interesting love/hate pattern he has with Twitter. Now firmly on the hate (or at least very disappointed) side, unfortunately.

        I keep wanting to do a textual analysis on them, organize them by themes or something. Maybe one day if I ever have time. There’s a woman named Shirin on Twitter who must have some kind of catalogue of his tweets, because she often re-posts them from years back on their “anniversary” with some nice comment.

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        • Shirin has an archive of dates (when was which event)…as for twitter, there is a very easy possibility to find every existing tweets of a twitterer at every chosen date through this:
          https://twitter.com/search-advanced
          just “@iamsrk” and the date (from-to) would be enough.
          There is also a woman who has a site where she did an overview from 2010 to 2017 of every month…it’s just the same thing only that she saved the links of her advanced search so that you can have the monthly tweets with one click:

          SRK’s Tweets of 2010


          To save them, I did copy paste (and also added the questions he got at a time when he only wrote the answers. It’s an interesting read.
          I would like to read that, your textual analysis, procrastinatrix 🙂

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    • I hadn’t thought about it that way. But to put a happy spin on it, perhaps it indicates that he is thinking about directing….So he is practicing.

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      • Or, preparing for his viral internet show, “Shahrukh travels the world”, where he just goes places and videos himself saying stuff. I would watch it!

        On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 2:52 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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  3. Molly here since this is going to post anonymous. Maybe Aryan did it. He’s probably home. Suhana is graduating Friday so I am sure they are both going. Gauri and AbRam are there already. This could very well be Shah Rukh and Aryan playing around in the same courtyard they used to kick soccer balls around…..

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  4. It doesn’t look professionally made to me. Mannat has a huge staff. He can just ask someone to hold the camera. It’s not like there is fancy camerawork being done. There is just a bit of slow motion and a filter added which can be done in 5 minutes by SRK himself. Everyone knows he loves filters to the point that his own kids make fun of him for overusing them. It doesn’t even look like a planned thing. I think he saw the anniversary trending on twitter for the last 2 or 3 days so he acknowledged it.

    I thought he left for London last week because there were pics of him at the airport. He either came back in 2 or 3 days or he never went? Maybe he just went to drop off Gauri and AbRam. There was a video of the two landing at Heathrow with SRK’s bodyguard Ravi so I assumed he must be there too.

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  6. I like the way ShahRukh is doing this break although he’s still working. He clearly shows that he isn’t interested in being in the public eye except when he chooses to be. There are ad agencies with whom he has a relationship going back to the time when he was studying in Jamia Millia Islamia. Here is something he wrote himself ( I post it because he just did an ad campaign with Ogilvy in Mumbai):
    “If I were given a choice between watching a film or watching a collection of good ads, I would prefer to watch ads. I remember when I was in Delhi I used to go to an ad agency called Anthem, where my friend used to work as a copywriter. I would enjoy sitting in for the brainstorming sessions which involved watching the world’s best ads. I would devotedly read Ogilvy & Mather. During my free time in college, I did production for a lot of ads. Like the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines campaign which introduced their Jumbo Carrier with the image of an elephant carrying cargo on his back. As a matter of fact, in college I took up Mass Communication just to make ad films. I did not want to make feature films. I think 30-second films are an art form, and an art form which is very difficult to master. Just like brevity is the soul of writing, I believe advertising is the soul of filmmaking. Even today, I really get excited when I see a well-made ad. Unfortunately, now that I have become a star, there’s only so much that can be done with me as a model. You have to use the ‘Shah Rukh Khan’ element.
    Most people don’t know this, but I have done a television ad for Liberty shoes while I was shooting Fauji. I looked really ugly in it. All I did was to wear my Puma t-shirt and football shorts and jump. They are the first sports shoes made in India and I was their first model. The second ad I did a Pan Parag kind of product, but it never really took off in the market.
    Then there were a lot of public service ads which I had done in Delhi during Fauji and Dil Darya. For one of these ads, I did my first stunt, and that too without an action choreographer. I collided into a car with my two-wheeler, and somersault onto the bonnet and went over the roof. The first ad I did after I came to Bombay, the Tata Tea ad, helped me to buy a house. I did three films in three days with Prahlad Kakkar. They were produced by Pravin Nischol (who later produced English Babu Desi Mem).
    They wanted me for the Pepsi ad at the time, but they did a survey and decided to take Aamir, who was already a star. Mukul had suggested my name because he felt that I would be the Next Big Thing. But after the survey, they didn’t take me.”

    Like it was written here, he is rather loyal to certain brands (even without doing ads for them), and BMW clearly is one of them.

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    • Thank you! What an interesting quote. I think Shahrukh is not alone among the big names who really care about their advertising campaigns. You can see it with Aamir and Ranveer, the way they really throw themselves into their campaigns in a unique way that says they had creative input, wanted creative input.

      On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 3:04 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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      • When ShahRukh launched his website SRK.World, he also published a part of his autobiography to which I came across in my early researches about him. It’s about 23 pages…do you have it? If not I could send it to you and you can send it to others interested.
        On twitter I’ve done a little page where he writes about how he decided to concentrate on acting in movies done from other excerpts of his bio.

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          • Thank you! I just read through the whole thing. There’s a part that’s even more relevant for this, he specifically talks about the extra stuff he does for brands. He does it because he thinks it is nice, if he is identified with a brand, he wants to put them in anywhere he can even outside of ads. Like drinking Pepsi in a movie.

            On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 8:48 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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          • Right. I just wanted to show his favouring of ads and still life has put him into feature films. When the Ogilvy employee wrote about having finished the shooting of a campaign the 21st, I remembered that he had written about Ogilvy in his bio. It was just an amazing thing for me that he worked with an agency he was mighty interested in more than 30 years ago as a young student. I think he also still works with the agency one of the C-Gang has.
            Using a product he also endorses could also be because the producer got sponsored with money for the movie. That alone would not give me the same vibe of loyalty as his drinking Pepsi privately, too.

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          • It’s so interesting, in America there is a big deal about launching a particular ad campaign with a star, something like that. In India, that “brand ambassador” label really is the most important part. They make an announcement just that the celebrity has signed with them, not the ad films or the posters or anything, just the relationship.

            On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 9:41 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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          • The star system is ending in India too. With the right movie and subject, anything can work. Or anything can fail with the wrong subject. Who ever thought Shahid Kapoor would get a blockbuster after almost 20 years?

            SRK and Salman are the last of the real stars.

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          • I was thinking about Shahid. I’ve been rooting for him for years, because he is just enormously talented. But he’s never been really good at that “star” stuff, making connections and being charming in interviews and whatever else it is that makes someone bigger than the roles they play.

            I’m glad he is getting credit for Kabir Singh, because it is long overdue. This is the kind of accolades he should have received for Padmavat and Rangoon instead of being ignored in favor of his more famous co-stars. But I can’t see it turning into top level stardom, not this far into his career and at this age and mostly just because I can’t see Shahid being that kind of a star. The age of the Stars is over, the age of the Actors is rising.

            Liked by 1 person

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